Hays Travel review: One of your travel agents

I mediate a Facebook page and was surprised to see earlier today (4/10) a Hays Travel agent had posted this on our group

Jennie Winn ·

1 h

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- anyone advise me please, work for hays travel have customers travelling with TUI it's passport advice going to Egypt! Can't get hold of any TUI staff at Manchester airport

This is rather worrying and why travel agents are advised by the UK passport Office to never offer any advice to customers on passport requirements and always refer customers to the government advice for the country they are travelling to.

Although I am sure she is good at her job she is completely wrong when she comments that she knows ' eu country's u can't travel on extensions'!

This is incorrect - the EU has two passport rules, they are fulfilled by different criteria, are independent of each other but both must be answered yes. Rule 1 uses the issue date - this must be less that 10 years old on the day of travel. Rule 2 uses the PRINTED expiry date which includes extensions and states that there must be three months remaining on the passport from the day after you leave the EU. The EU is the only country in the world that cares when your passport was issued everyone else uses the PRINTED expiry date but do have different rules so this is why you should be advising customers to check the government advice not ask on Facebook! The Government advice for Egypt is here https://www.gov.uk/foreign.../egypt/entry-requirements

Is this company advice - ask unknown Facebook contributors to help you as a travel professional to answer a customers query rather that look online at the factual correct information easily obtainable. I can't work out whether she was just being lazy or she really didn't know who to ask or where to find the information, in which case I would question the training that this advisor has been receiving and why she was working solo!

Her profile shows she lives in Swinton, Lancashire so I presume she is working at the Swinton branch.